


No Sleep

by yourfriendlyneighborhoodspectre



Category: Mass Effect
Genre: Angst, Character Death, F/M, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-08-13
Updated: 2014-08-13
Packaged: 2018-02-13 01:07:19
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,003
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2131338
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/yourfriendlyneighborhoodspectre/pseuds/yourfriendlyneighborhoodspectre
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Kaidan Alenko doesn't get sleep much anymore, but not for the reasons you might think.</p>
            </blockquote>





	No Sleep

**Author's Note:**

> This takes place just a few months after Alchera, where Kaidan has been on extended leave.  
> Originally posted on Tumblr.

Kaidan doesn’t get much sleep anymore. If you asked him why, he’d just shrug, muttering something about ship sleep cycles and being back on Earth. Then he’d turn away, hoping you wouldn’t question him further, because he knows exactly why he isn’t sleeping as much and it has nothing to do with either of those things.

Migraines have nothing to do with it; they’re not any more frequent than usual.

It’s not because of nightmares either. He almost wishes it was.

Kaidan doesn’t sleep much anymore because there’s no point. She isn’t there.

He tried sleeping all the time, at first. If he could dream then she could be alive again, with him, for however brief a moment. Consciousness didn’t afford him the same chance - he was too busy fending off a rightfully concerned family from prying into his grief, while trying to hold himself together for their benefit. Even so, Kaidan spent his waking hours drifting, disconnected. Food was a necessary nuisance, but he resented the interactions that came along with it. Speaking coherently was difficult when your mind kept wandering off into the fog, groping about blindly for some shred of memory that proved that yes, she was real and yes, she had been yours. When nighttime finally came around, he desperately threw himself into bed, and after a few fitful minutes surrendered to his mental exhaustion with a small spark of hope in his chest. _She’ll be there._

Only she wasn’t. The night came and went, and Kaidan arose from a dreamless _(Shepard-less)_ sleep, more frustrated and despondent than the day before. And so it went for weeks on end, a vicious cycle that had him sleeping for extended periods of time. The days bled into the nights bled into the days as he lay under thin sheets with his eyes scrunched closed, lamenting all the little details he took for granted when she was alive.

He can’t hear her laugh – not the wild cackles she’d let loose while driving the Mako off a cliff, or the honeyed giggles she surprised him with late into the sleep cycle as they skirted the bounds of professionalism.

Her smiles are lost to his memory; he doesn’t remember which side of her mouth would turn up while trying (and failing) to smother a grin at his dry wit or innumerous foot-in-mouth comments.

Her eyes are what he misses the most. They were alive, always alive, with the fury of battle, or determination, and when they looked his way, affectionate warmth that eventually gave way to love. He had been the proverbial moth to her brightly burning flame.

What kind of cruel joke was the universe playing on him then, where he could still vividly recall the feeling of turian neck bone snapping through his foot, but not the texture of his lover’s scarred cheek beneath his fingers? It seemed that the void had taken not only her physical form, but every sensation of her he had ever had. Either that or the more distressing side-effects of his L2 implant had finally caught up with him. He’s not even mildly surprised when he realizes he doesn’t care if they have.

It is two months after Alchera when Kaidan gives up on dreaming. The hour is late; normally at this time he’d be deeply immersed in his deserted dreamscape, but what’s captured his attention has effectively wiped out any trace of weariness. He isn’t sure what possesses him, but on a whim he fires up his omni-tool for the first time since the Normandy’s destruction, flicking through decryption codes and old report drafts when he comes upon an unnamed folder. A double click to open, and the world around him drops out of existence. It’s the answer to all his dreamless nights – a folder of her, of pictures and videos from the shore leave they spent together after the battle for the Citadel, well past caring about the regs and fraternization. If he weren’t so breathless from seeing her smiling face again, he’d kick himself for not remembering all this sooner. He starts flipping through the folder contents, the images like cracks in the dam that had been withholding the flood of everything he’d been trying so hard to remember. A profound sadness tightens his chest, but it is nothing compared to the relief he feels from seeing her whole again, even if it’s only in pixels.

Kaidan goes through all the photos once, then the smattering of videos, and then all the photos again when he finally realizes the sun has long since risen. He’s groggy, his neck is stiff, and his eyes burn, but it’s the first time he’s had a clear head since seeing Joker limp out alone from that final escape pod. Going through the folder becomes a nightly ritual, because it’s the only thing he feels keeps him sane. He takes energy stims throughout the day to try and stave off the fatigue, but there are times where he blacks out, waking up to the repeated recording of her singing an old Creole folk tune. If you don’t look too closely he could pass for a functional human being, but there’s no disguising the dark circles under his eyes, or any plausible way to explain the extra 30 seconds it takes him to answer the grief counselor Alliance Command mandated he see every two weeks.

This will have to stop eventually, he knows. It’s unbecoming of an Alliance officer, especially one that the now Councilman Anderson has taken interest in, in regards to both his career and his mental health. Soon, he’ll have to implement the self-control that has gotten him this far in life, the control that she came to appreciate and admire, and somehow managed to make him lose all together. When that day comes, it’ll be a long, uphill battle to some semblance of normalcy again. For now though, he’ll sit under the moonlight with his omni-tool at hand, and gaze at his beloved, frozen in time.


End file.
